


About the Journey

by sahiya



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Humor, Road Trips, Sea Otters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking back, Rory couldn’t remember Amy suggesting the road-trip, but he knew it must have been her idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	About the Journey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eve11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eve11/gifts).



> Thanks to Fuzzyboo for beta reading.

Looking back, Rory couldn’t remember Amy suggesting the road-trip, but he knew it must have been her idea. It was the sort of thing she’d always said they should do, back before the Doctor: rent a convertible and drive down the California coast. God knew the idea would’ve never come from the Doctor, who didn’t see the point in driving somewhere when they could just take the TARDIS. 

A point on which he was currently expounding from the backseat: “If we’d taken the TARDIS we could already be saying ‘hello!’ to a sea otter - well, at least I could -”

“You speak otter now, do you?” Amy asked, twisting around in her seat. 

“Otter, seal, dolphin - my whale’s a bit rusty though, and frankly not even Time Lords have the right vocal cords for it, you really need the resonance that comes from being underwater.” 

Amy rolled her eyes. “I’ve always wanted to see California, and traveling by TARDIS all we see is the destination.”

“Yes, exactly!” the Doctor said. “That’s the point.”

“Not always, Doctor,” Rory said, frowning in concentration at the road. Rory had grabbed the car keys at the rental office before either of his traveling companions could. Amy was a bad enough driver on the left side of the road, and while Rory had never seen the Doctor drive a car, he shuddered to think what it would be like. “Sometimes it’s about the journey. I mean, look at that ocean. Isn’t that beautiful?” 

“Yes, ocean. Very nice. Wide, gray, foamy. And look, there’s a bit more! Also wide and gray and foamy. Do we really need to see two hundred miles of it?”

“Yes, Doctor, it’s a road trip,” Amy said, in a voice that meant the Doctor was treading close to the edge of her patience. 

“ _Road trip_ ,” the Doctor grumbled. “Isn’t that just another way of saying _getting there the slowest way imaginable_?”

“No, Doctor,” Amy said sweetly, turning around to face him. “The slowest possible way would be if we made you get out and walk.”

The Doctor wisely shut up after that. For at least ten miles. 

He had a point, though, Rory had to admit. California had about eight hundred miles of coastline, and Rory had no intention of actually driving all of it, especially not with the Doctor grousing in the back seat. But somewhere along the way, Amy had decided that their destination was a town called Monterey, which was only about halfway down the coast. 

“Apparently John Steinbeck is from there,” she said to Rory. 

“Pff,” the Doctor said from the backseat. “If you turn us around and take us back to the TARDIS, I could take you to _meet_ John Steinbeck.”

Amy ignored him. “Also, they have a world famous aquarium.”

“ _Pff_!”

“Fine, Doctor, what would you like to do?” Rory asked. “Besides go back to the TARDIS,” he added, before the Doctor could. 

The Doctor thrust his face forward between the two of them. “Let me see that.” He snatched the guide book out of Amy’s hand. “Ha! Sea kayaking! That’s an adventure! Not as good as meeting John Steinbeck, but a lot better than an _aquarium_.” 

“Okay, then,” Amy said, grabbing at her guidebook. Rory glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see the Doctor dodge out of her reach. “Sea kayaking it is. Are you going to stop whinging?”

“I don’t whinge, Pond,” the Doctor said, loftily. “Time Lords never whinge. We object with dignity.”

Amy snorted. Rory bit his lip. Yes, that was the word that came to mind when he thought of the Doctor. _Dignity._

Amy’s guide book pointed them in the direction of a place that rented kayaks for tourists to take out on the bay amidst the floating kelp forests. The kayaks seated two people, and somehow - Rory was really not sure how - Amy and the Doctor ended up in one while he paddled along behind in his own. 

Story of his life. But after a while, Rory was just as glad _not_ to be partnered with the Doctor, who paddled a kayak the same way he danced: lots of flailing, no efficiency. Amy was looking both wet and annoyed by the time Rory spotted their first sea otter, wrapped in kelp and dozing in the late afternoon sun. He wasn’t sure what it reminded him of more: his Aunt Margaret’s little dog or his grandpa. 

It looked like a nice life, really. Floating along in the sun, nothing to worry about except your next meal. A nice, simple life. Sometimes Rory thought he could really get on board with that, except he knew that Amy never would. 

They saw more sea otters after that, and even, off in the distance, a pod of dolphins. The Doctor didn’t complain once. All in all, it was a beautiful afternoon. 

Until Amy ended up in the water. 

***

Rory had no idea how it happened. One minute everyone was paddling along in peace, and then there was a shout, a splash, the next thing he knew, his wife was clinging to the side of her kayak with a piece of kelp in her air and murder in her eyes. This, despite the claims of the bloke at the rental shop that it was more or less impossible to fall out of a kayak in calm conditions. And the conditions today were basically somnolent.

Twenty minutes later, they were back at the rental shop. Amy was wrapped in a towel the clerk had said they could keep, and she and the Doctor were still bickering about what had happened. The Doctor claimed it had had nothing to do with him; Amy claimed that if he paddled a kayak “like a normal person,” she’d never have fallen in. The Doctor retorted that he paddled “with style.” Meanwhile, Rory pulled out his phone and looked up the location of the nearest hotel.

By the time they made it back to the car, a sulky silence had descended. It lasted until Rory went to pull out of the parking lot and back onto the motorway. “Rory, what are you doing?” Amy demanded, as he turned south. “I’m soaking wet! We’re going straight back to the TARDIS, and I will _kill_ anyone who has to stop and pee.”

“You could be in a hot bath right now, Pond, if we’d taken the -”

“So help me, Doctor -”

“Will the two of you shut up?” Rory finally snapped. “Amy, I’m not going to watch you freeze for two hundred miles. I booked us a room at a hotel down the road. You can have a hot shower and we’ll hang up your clothes to dry, all right?”

There was a brief silence. “Thanks,” Amy finally muttered. Rory reached over and took her hand and she smiled at him, hair hanging wet and stringy in her face. 

The hotel was pretty nice, right on a cliff with a view of the ocean. Amy was a lot happier once she was submerged in a tub of hot water, and while the Doctor went out to scramble down the cliff face to the beach below, Rory took the liberty of ordering room service. By the time Amy emerged from the shower in a cloud of floral-scented steam, wrapped in a fluffy robe, the room service cart had arrived. 

“Nicely done, Mr. Pond,” Amy said, taking a plate of grilled cheese and chips back to bed. “This is much better than freezing my arse off all the way up the coast.”

“I agree,” Rory said, wrapping himself around her. He stole a chip and she swatted at him. “Terrible American television?”

“Yes, please,” she said, snuggling closer. 

By the time the Doctor returned, Amy was nearly asleep. “The word is _bracing_ ,” the Doctor said as he blew in. Glancing out the window, Rory saw that a gray fog had rolled in, covering up the blue sky they’d had all day. “For other people of course. Not for me. Don’t really like fog, though,” he added contemplatively as he dropped his jacket in the middle of the floor. “Makes everything look all the same.” He poked through the plates on the room service cart until he found the macaroni and cheese. 

“Well, then you won’t mind staying in,” Rory said. 

“I suppose not. Move over, Ponds.”

“Doctor, there’s another bed,” Rory protested, but it was too late. The Doctor barely stopped to toe off his shoes, and then he was climbing over Rory and Any to wedge himself in next to Amy with his plate of mac and cheese. “Feeling better, Amy?”

“I was,” she said, raising her head and frowning, “until this alien bloke with the body temperature of ice cream wandered in from the fog and decided to snuggle up next to me.”

“Hush, Pond,” the Doctor said through a mouthful of macaroni. 

Rory shook his head. Amy grumbled, but it was a fond sort of grumbling. Whatever _had_ happened for her to end up in the water, she seemed to have forgiven the Doctor for it. And, strange though it was to admit it, Rory didn’t really care where the Doctor slept. 

“Today was a good day,” Rory said out loud. “Don’t you think?”

“I suppose,” Amy said. “The dry parts, anyway. Doctor?”

The Doctor sighed. “For a day lived all in the right order, it wasn’t terrible.”

“That’s the spirit,” Rory said, and reached over to ruffle the Doctor’s hair. Amy laughed and stole a bite of the Doctor’s dinner, then laid her head back down on Rory’s chest. 

Definitely worth the journey, Rory thought with a smile. 

_Fin._


End file.
